Checking In: Heartbreak Tornadoes and Other Stories
by
The Small Bow Family Orchestra
*****
Our readers give us updates on their breakups, relapses, unrelenting sadness, de-stabilizing madness, and hygiene habits in the hopes that we all feel a little less lonesome and weird today.
illustration by Edith Zimmerman
Ready. Set. Go.
*****
“There are a lot of little things in my life that giving my life life again. he biggest thing is that I'm remembering who I am and it feels fantastic. I find myself smiling more and laughing with my mouth open, head back. I just started seeing someone that I like! I would love to say it was a flip of the switch, but I've been doing the work, the therapy, the journaling, the time alone, the sobriety, the crying it out, the binge eating, the taking my medication every damn day, the pushing myself out of my comfort zone. It's been fucking WORK. But fuck, it feels amazing to say I feel good today.” – Anonymous
*****
“I feel like I’m in a bit of a rut, but aren’t we all. I stopped drinking 85 days ago. On that front, I’m doing great. Don’t have many cravings anymore. I’m feeling a little down because I’m doing a lot of things to better myself (therapy, meds, quitting drinking, trying to eat better and exercise a bit) and I still don’t feel great. Kinda was hoping for quicker results but I guess I should just stay the course. My life just feels like I can’t do anything normally and I just keep taking away things like alcohol and junk food that I thought I enjoyed but actually hurt me in the long run. I don’t know where I’m going with this. Just felt good to vent.” – Anonymous
*****
“I am really good. I still get a little scared saying that, like doing good is some skittish little animal I’m trying to get to be comfortable around me and stay close to me and I have to be careful not to look at it or do anything to scare it off. but I’m just… really good. I still don’t really have my shit together by any means—so far this year I’ve done two installments of a column that’s supposed to be weekly; the scariest things on my “cleaning up the wreckage of my past” to-do list are still there, glaring at me, haunting me. But I am making progress and I have this feeling like things are coming together, little by slowly or whatever we say.
And I’m so grateful all the time. Two years ago I would not have been able to conceive of where I am right now. Even last year! I have my own apartment, I have work, I am building community, I am I think maybe getting into a healthy (??!!) relationship (???!), I have so much less fear coursing through me at all times. The thing lately that is really cool and that I never thought would be possible is discovering my own tastes and instincts a little bit. I’m going through all these things that I had in storage, in boxes in various family members’ homes, and instead of deliberating and trying to figure out what I *should* do, what a better or smarter person would do, I’m just following what feels right. And even the existence of a right feeling—that’s so new! And so cool! I still can’t really wrap my mind around how much in my life has been made possible by sobriety, as a sort of foundational groundwork. I wasn’t a gutterdrunk, not a very cool or exciting addict, so it was hard to really believe that was something I needed to really address. Turns out it was the fundamental thing I needed in order to be able to even have a shot at anything else. So grateful.” – Anonymous
*****
“I am five-plus years into sobriety after a 13-year run with crystal meth. I am still amazed that I am sober. A strange set of circumstances in 2016 came about that resulted in me finding myself sober and physically unable to keep on getting high anymore, and so I just sort of stumbled along, one day after another, baffled at who I had been, and confused about who I was becoming.
I believed for the first few years that sobriety would find me a path forward and that there would be some kind of almost mystical sense descend on me ~ instead, my life has continued to be difficult and confusing, but minus the daily injections of meth. That continues to puzzle me and I sometimes have to remind myself to not expect anything from sobriety other than the relief of normal, boring life.” – Anonymous
*****
“I'm crying a lot. And I mean crying, in the bathtub, in the dark, with a cigarette, like I'm in a video for The National. Nobody wants to hear about a dying dog, yet here I am. She's 17. I adopted her in Maine back in 2006. It's time to let her go and I'm a fucking mess. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. I know that when it's over I will feel relief, and I can't think of anything worse than the thought of that.” – Anonymous
*****
“I ran out of my meds and my boyfriend moved in with me for two days, said some horrible things, and left me. I feel so much guilt and shame and blame - it's my fault he said those things, it's my fault, it's my fault, and I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone what happened because I'm half-convinced I'll go back to him, whether or not he meant what he said.” – Anonymous
*****
“I feel hopeful and still sometimes numb, too detached, too focused on right/wrong thinking and hypervigilance. I just started the Al-Anon steps with a sponsor (my sponsor, I can’t even type that comfortably like I’m unworthy of possessing a sponsor) and it’s revealing a lot: I’m uncomfortable with the waiting, the go-between, the vulnerability of being seen.
I’m celebrating 8 years sober from alcohol and drugs today! I’m in a new phase of my recovery from over and secret shopping but I still doomscroll my apps to numb out and sometimes I shop and then go through a binge/purge cycle with those purchases.
But also: I’m being a goofy loving parent when I’m not on my phone and I love myself in those moments. I have a budding relationship with my older brother (one of my qualifiers) who is also in a program that feels surreal. I’m detaching from expectations that my parents will ever really see me. I’m loving myself more, laughing kindly at myself, and noticing the way things work out. I think about grief, forgiveness, and how I am not responsible for everything to go right. I’m grateful.” –Anonymous
*****
“I have to say I feel better after having been through some of the worst months of my life. And then, when I say that, I think "maybe it wasn't that bad and you're just feeling better because winter's over and some other stuff just fell into place that was really depressing you." Then I remember, months ago, most of 2021 I had an awfully skewed, miserable perspective on every single conceivable thing in my life and the best I could do was feel for maybe 10 minutes, maybe a half-hour, "things might be a little hopeful." Then that would pass and I'd sink into the gray, grim state I knew all too well. So yeah, I don't feel as bad as all that. I hate Depression.” – Anonymous
*****
“I’m anxious and scared. I’m asking my work for a 90-day medical leave to do treatment. I’m not sure how to navigate the conversations or questions I will receive. My doctor has given me a letter but that’s just the start.” – Anonymous
*****
“I feel pathetic and tired and lonely and like people are a little allergic to me. I really dread going back to the office but I think I am underestimating the toll that being alone so often is having on me. I was dating someone I was really into and it was so surprising and nice but he's not over his ex so now we're just friends. I get it but it's hard because now my insecurities are so much louder than they were before. I feel like I'm rapidly getting old and I don't know how to handle it. I keep feeling a sense of dread and panic - like life is just leaping forward in decades and I am being left behind. I feel so scared of being alone forever. I hate it. This doesn't make me want to drink. So that's good. But it does make me want to do other things - like text a very toxic man for attention or quit my job and maybe just die. So that's not ideal. Talking about it just makes it worse - the way people talk to single women in their 30s is so condescending. They tell you how to feel, what to do, and act like you have to train men - like men don't have any agency and it's 100% up to you to manifest everything. It's degrading to both parties. I feel like I have no idea how to relate to anyone anymore. I know I should do more, get out more, it would feel better but it's so much work and I'm tired.” – Anonymous
*****
“I’ve been thinking about measuring time in Liquids. I feel an overwhelming urge to float in bodies of water, to crawl under a hot stream, to fill myself up to the very top in Liquid.” – AVR
*****
“I felt better than I usually do at this time of year for a few weeks, which was odd but pleasant; I had enough energy to feel almost like a "normal" person. Left the house for some walks and even started doing some very gentle yoga. Perimenopause has really been messing with my already-bipolar brain for the past four years or so, and hormonal fluctuations knocked me out of commission again this week. It's frustrating, but now at least I'm much more accepting of the vagaries of navigating in this earth suit. If I need to sleep for 12 hours AND take a 2-hour nap, so be it.” – Anonymous
*****
“I've now reached the age where most of my visits to see my family happen because someone has died. Every visit seeps in quiet mourning and small but painful reminders that there will come a day when I stop returning because everyone I care about has passed away.” – Anonymous
*****
“I feel old. I am old--decades older than your TSB target audience. But I am 7.1 months sober and feeling grateful every damn day. So don't mind the geezer lurking around your glorious posts. It's my medicine.” – Anonymous
INTERMISSION!
doo-doo-doo-dooo
d00000-dooo-dooo
doooooo0-dooo
d000….
OKAY BACK!
*****
“How am I feeling? Wow out of control, I am married and yet a met someone and got really excited about them, but questioning everything, why now, why him, what about my marriage, which to be honest isn’t that great. Well this person told me they just want to be friends and of course, I was crushed and now I’m obsessing over them, trying hard to let go of something that really wasn’t.” – Anonymous
*****
“I turn 36 years old in a few days, I was recently diagnosed with inattentive ADHD and I just purchased my first anti-wrinkle skincare product with a Walgreens gift card that my mom gave me as a birthday gift. All of these things would have been easier to deal with if I were shitfaced on a Thursday because happy hour turned into “wasted in the Taco Bell drive-thru at 11 o'clock at night,” but I haven't sent an "I'm really sorry about last night" text message in two years, 10 months and four days, so I am focusing on that.”
– Anonymous
*****
“Just beginning to reckon with my codependent own habits, I am feeling some sense of responsibility for fixing everything: my dad’s depression, my mom’s addiction, the trauma for my siblings. It feels like people ask it of me, but maybe, waving the shiny red flag of someone else’s problems helps distract the bull (that’s me!) from digesting the way this all makes me feel like I can’t breathe?”
– Anonymous
*****
“Fuck fuck fuckity fucking motherfucking fucking fuck. Thanks for the newsletter. It helps sometimes.” – Anonymous
*****
“The commonality of omicron is triggering my addict paranoia. I’m having a hard time discerning what is legitimate concern over possible contamination versus my former hard drug-fueled lifestyle choices. We were champion trash pickers, finding the most top-shelf pantry items, effectively dumpster diving like it was our goddamned jobs- because, well, it was keeping us alive.
We were squatting in our bando because the landlord defaulted on the mortgage, and the auction was scheduled for April of 2020. We all know that lockdown started a month prior, so suddenly we were lawless. We prided ourselves on how thrifty we were being- we would go weeks at a time with less than $5 to our names. From 1 am to 4 am every night we’d cruise up and down the alleys, with backpacks, hand sanitizer, tote bags upon tote bags, ready to bring back anything we deemed useful. The goldmine was the dumpster behind the healthy grocery store. At one point, our kitchen was filled to the brim with bougie ass grain mixes, mushroom elixir coffee creamer, hazelnut butter, vitamins. And of course, because we were soaring high all night long, we felt both unstoppable and yet also, always being observed. I always felt dirty, I always feared contamination,
I felt like a diseased bottom feeder.
Fast forward to now, a year and nearly two months off the drugs, and I just feel adrift. They say it gets easier??? But nothing really feels anymore. I’m just existing in this meh void, and I’m existentially exhausted. Living in full-on survivalist crisis mode was thrilling. Or course, I wanted to die every day but now that I am healing and recovering from that devastation, I don’t feel anything at all.” – Anonymous
*****
“Had a little relapse on Friday and Saturday of last week, but back at it.” – Anonymous
*****
“Someone in my periphery died two days ago. He's not easy to encapsulate in a neat eulogy, or even to a friend. But in the 31 years, he was present alongside my family, I don't remember a single photo or time spent when he didn't have a drink in his hand.
He was alone with his dog. Nobody found out for days. He had exhausted every contact, he had burnt every bridge, he had lost all of his people.
He guided me through and bought me my first tailored suit. He was so proud. I wish I could have encapsulated that queer joy without faltering or centering myself in the narrative but now the shimmery joy of that gift, six years ago, sits only inside me now.
My mom called to tell me the news and she said the lesson was to stay healthy and not drink, like it's easy, like he missed a step and just needed to course correct. I wish I had told him that I knew that it wasn't that easy. I wish he hadn't probably heard it all before. I wish I had told him how much I loved the suit.” – Anonymous
*****
“I've been sober for 2 years and 3 months. What made me decide to quit my problematic drinking was that 2 years and 4 months ago my dad, a long-time and very high functioning alcoholic, gave himself alcohol-induced brain damage called "wet brain" or, formally, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (seriously Google it). He drank scotch in such heavy amounts that he literally gave himself brain damage to the point of having erased all his adult memories, including that my mom, his wife of 48 years, died in 2019.
He cognitively doesn't have the ability to learn anything new and his short-term memory is about 5-seconds. He absolutely can't drive, can't handle his own finances and has actually lost thousands being scammed, he can't follow a conversation but is so selfish all he cares about and talks about is himself and his unhappiness and he threatens to commit suicide basically every time I talk to him. He's been progressively getting worse (think: diapers for men) and yesterday, Monday 1/31, I had to move him into a memory care unit which is bleak as fuuuck.
For example: after getting everything all set up in preparation for him to move in, we went there and found his bed had been peed on like soaked thru with pee from another memory care resident. I've been feeling overwhelming, cry-at-my-desk guilt about putting him there, and also rage at how I have to handle the burden of what he did to himself. I'm an only child, I have a spouse and little kids I'm trying to raise, and I work full time. I've had to sell his house, move him 1500 miles, get him in assisted living, then pull him out of assisted living during COVID, feed/shop/cook for him, police his purchases to make sure he's not buying booze, etc. Growing up, both my parents modeled what I thought was normal drinking — a beer after work, wine with dinner, followed by scotch before bed. On the daily. I thought that was NORMAL. My sobriety now is all about breaking the cycle for my kids by modeling abstinence. It's been really, really hard though lately. I just feel sooo low.” – Anonymous
*****
“It sounds physically impossible, but I feel like I'm stuck in a rut AND spiraling out of control at the same time. And that's true in so many facets of my life. I've been underemployed for the past 15 months -- some freelance writing here and there, a little bartending, and that's about it. Then last week I got an email from my former employer -- the one who furloughed me in October 2020 and made it an official layoff three months later. Business is booming once again and they need help and would I consider coming back as a contract employee with perhaps slight hope of the job turning into a staff position in six months? Part of me says sure, I loved what I was doing and the people I was doing it with and have in many ways felt unmoored since I was unceremoniously shitcanned.
But another part of me says that if you go back, the last 15 months have meant nothing, that you're right back at Square 1 without having learned a thing or grown in any way. I had grand plans to use this time to finish my novel, and while I did add more than 10,000 words to the manuscript, I still can't see the finish line. And all this open space in front of me just feels overwhelming. I have shit to do, but whenever I start one task, my broken brain tells me that a different task is more important.
I'm also doing a shitty job of taking care of myself -- drinking too much, not sleeping enough, not exercising at all. So I guess I swallow my pride and go back to working for The Man and accept that this is all that there ever will be, that life won't, can't get any better than this shitty little rut.” – Anonymous
*****
“Not to brag but I showered today.” – M.C.
